Elegy in Five Movements
by Amatara
Summary: Pre-canon. Dale Cooper, in those weeks after Caroline's death. Five times Albert tries to make a difference.


**Author's Note:** Should more or less fit into the events, and time frame, from the novel (Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes), but can be read separately without any problem.  
**Disclaimer:** I bow to David Lynch.

* * *

**Elegy in Five Movements**

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* * *

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_I._

There is a moth on the ceiling. Large and grey and feathery, it just sits there flitting, oblivious.

He sees this because someone has switched on the lights, harsh yellow lights that stretch the moth's shadow out like an echo. They're hurting his eyes, he would say, except the rest of him is hurting too, and it's hard to tell where one hurt stops and another begins. Still, it seems important that he knows, so he starts to run the list through his head: limbs, _okay. _Chest, _okay. S_kull, stomach –

A noise distracts him. Fast, running footsteps, then shouted orders, but they're muted, distant. Like the echo of another world that's already left him behind.

It feels, to be honest, quite peaceful that way.

It takes him a moment to piece together that, if the ceiling's in front of him, the cold hard thing pressed against his scalp can only be the floor. A quarter turn of his head confirms this. He sighs, feeling oddly relieved.

Logic still applies. There is still up and down, floor and ceiling, moths and limbs and insect wings. The world hasn't stopped turning.

This is significant, somehow. He thinks not long ago he doubted it, though he can't for the life of him remember why. And there's another feeling, too, the nagging sense he has forgotten something. The thought clinging – like the mask that, just now, is shoved across his face, fingers at his neck squeezing deep, urgent. Like digging for memories.

Pain blossoms, sharp, and he tries, again, to name the source: his heart, his chest? His _side_.

With the knowledge comes a rush of something bitter, something that would taste just like panic if it wasn't so silky warm in his mouth. (Panic is cold, isn't it? It's supposed to be cold.) He coughs and twists and spits it out, the mask lifting. The fingers twist with him, solid panic splayed against his cheek.

"Caroline," he says, with an effort. It is important to say this. He doesn't know why, but it is, so he says it again, just to make sure. Also, because there was no sound the first time.

"Caroline." And there's no sound this time either, but that's all right.

She can't hear him anyway.

* * *

_II. _

He must be dead. That's his first thought, becoming aware again.

Several clues point to this. The first, that he's never seen the world in such detail, all shadows and lines and sharp edges, surfaces drenched in a ruddy glow. The face hovering over him – drawn, angled, the only white thing in whatever hell or heaven they've put him in – is his second clue.

Last time he checked, Albert Rosenfield was still, after all, not a doctor for the living.

He wonders, idly, if they're alone here. He wonders where they took –

A gasp escapes him. The illusion shatters in a world of pain.

It's bad. He can tell from Albert's reaction – barked command supplanted by frantic murmurs, monosyllable staccato beat. Nausea hits a second later, threatening to spill over. A hand twists between his neck and the pillow; quick flip of his head, and then he's dry-heaving over the side of the mattress, feeling like any moment he'll split down the middle, bursting like a big, overripe tomato. (An image which, strangely, helps him to focus.)

This is penance, he thinks, in the part of his mind that's still capable of thought. Penance for losing her. He's always believed in balancing the scores. Still, it's all he can do to breathe through it.

When it tapers off, Albert's hand is on the pillow, smoothing it down with furious thumbstrokes.

"Gave you too little." Sandpaper-grit in the voice. "Damn wet-behind-the-ears doctors, always giving you too little for the pain."

He remembers now, why Albert would be here. He was on watch tonight, waiting for Cooper to check in, every two hours, from the safe house. He would have been the first to know.

"Should have let me go," he hears himself say. "Why not let me –"

His world turns black before he can finish.

* * *

_III._

Diane has brought him flowers. A big, sunny, screaming orange bouquet, looking nothing like what sick people are supposed to have on their windowsills. This was, he suspects, a deliberate strategy on her part. He's just not certain which one.

He'll live, which they tell him is a good thing. Gordon Cole made it his personal business to tell him – that he's ONE LUCKY MAN TO BE ALIVE, COOP. And yet, watching Albert elbow Gordon into precarious silence, he couldn't help but question that.

The door creaks open. Taking his eyes from the flowers, he finds Albert peeling off his coat. Looking tired, he thinks; tired and grim, same as he's feeling.

"Did you get to see Windom?" He skips the niceties for both their sakes.

"I did. No change, they said." Pitch-black scowl. "Still mad as a hatter – well, they didn't say _that_, but they were thinking it, and frankly, so was I. Not a lucid word out of him. And believe me, Coop, I tried."

He's glad for the pillow at his back, a sturdy thing for him to sink into. "I caused this." He blinks. "It's my fault he's in there. If Caroline hadn't –"

"You can't know that." Angry snap of a line. And, God, he can't fight this battle right now. Not with himself, let alone with Albert.

"His wife was killed because of me," he says. "That makes it my –"

"And I still say: _you can't know that._" The latter trough clenched teeth. _"_I know you thought highly of Earle, but there's some damn weird stuff about him, Coop, and it's got _squat_ to do with you. So–"

"Albert – can we stop it there, please?" Vague sense of guilt at the pain in those eyes, as Albert shuts off like a switch. One day, he knows, they'll need to have this talk. One day, but not now – not with Caroline's face still stamped on his eyelids, the knife-twist echo in his gut.

He's sweating, and his chest feels tight. A dry, cotton-ball tightness that's nothing like the asthma he had as a kid, and everything like drowning. He knows this because he drowned, once, or thought he was going to. Car chase along the board of the canal. Close, so very close, except his quarry had friends, some of whom also had cars, one of which he hadn't seen coming. He got out in the end, though he isn't sure how. What he remembers is holding his breath, stubbornly, to the point of unconsciousness, and that there was no pain. Not until he broke the surface.

He's barely scratched the surface now, hasn't he? Just barely, and it's all he can do to keep going.

When he opens his eyes, Albert is fingering the IV bag, holding it to the light like so many liquid rainbows.

"Gordon and I had a talk." Scowling at the label like it's something obscene. "When you're out of here, he wants you somewhere safe. Have someone keep an eye on you while we try to find the killer."

He blinks. "Albert, I don't really think that's…"

"The premise isn't up for debate. Just the company." And he doesn't know how Albert can look both angry _and_ fragile, but he is. "Our good Gordon nominated _me_. But if you want someone else – say, someone nice and anonymous, asking no questions… That's your call."

For a moment, _someone else_ is all he's tempted to say. It would be easier, he's sure of that. And there is, of course, the little complication that Albert loves him. Loves him with a fierce, chaste love that would have put your average saint to shame – not that Albert would ever be mistaken for one.

He doesn't need a saint, though.

Just a friend will do.

* * *

_IV._

Five seconds. Five seconds after he dropped the glass. That's what it takes Albert to burst through the door. Possibly less, but he's too dizzy to tell.

"Fuck, Cooper, what –" The voice sounds breathless, furtive like the hand that finds his spine, easing him down and forward. He registers shards on the floor, the sound of Albert cursing as he swipes them away. Even more shards after that, verbal ones, sounding like "Sit" and "Breathe" and "Head between your knees" as Albert squeezes in beside him.

He blinks down at the tiles, letting the words flow over him. White, unfamiliar tiles, in stilted counterpoint to the image he still sees, in flashes, when closing his eyes. Oak floorboards, a smear of red. Blink-blink-blink, white-black-red-white. A myriad of knives descending.

He shivers, pulls himself back to the here and now. Beside him, Albert lets out a hitched breath.

"Doctor's tip of the day: no passing out in the can, all right?" Gruffness clicking back into in place, like the lid closing down on a box. Reconnaissance, Cooper thinks. Baiting him to gauge his response. Trust Albert to keep charting the terrain.

"Coop?" Albert tugs at him, not hard, but not kind either. A furious whisper, "What the hell do you think you were doing?"

"Getting some water." Which is true, but Albert still shoots him that _don't-bullshit-me_ look, so he adds, faintly, "Got light-headed standing up.

Anger wars with helplessness in Albert's face. In the end, the anger wins out.

"Whatever you need – water, pills, a goddamn _Big Mac_ – you take it to _me_, okay? We've been through this." All tension and gritty vowels in his ear. "You're not fit to be pulling any stunts, and I prefer not having to stitch you back together when I find you –" The voice wavers, cuts itself off, and for a second there Albert looks lost.

_Oh_, he thinks, and thenagain – _oh – _as it dawns.

Albert's afraid, isn't he? Afraid for _him._

And not just Albert, either. His dad, Diane, it all clicks now. Somehow they're all scared that, unless they watch him, Dale Cooper will do something spectacularly, monumentally stupid. And in all fairness – he _has _thought about it. Has forced himself to consider it, rationally, like all those other options, but rejected it along with the rest of them.

He glances up into eyes lined with doubt. Has to swallow, hard, as Albert does the same, Adam's apple jumping furiously.

"Albert, I just –" He shivers, pulls his robe closer about him. "I – I can't – simply _sit _here." Which is, quite possibly, closer to the point than anything he's said since this started. "I need something –" he continues, under Albert's startled look, "some _focus_, something to put my mind to other than…" He trails off. He hasn't said her name since –

Albert clears his throat, noisily. "You ever play poker?"

"No." He blinks, surprised.

"Well." Long beat. "We'll take it from there."

* * *

_V._

The world hasn't stopped turning. Walking the streets again, alone, it's impossible to doubt that.

The sky is cloudless steel: at some point when he wasn't looking, spring made way for a fledgling summer. Schools have finished for the day, and he weaves himself a cautious path across the sidewalks. A few weeks' isolation, and already everything feels crowded, dazzling, unreal. It's like all that time, he was stuck in orbit while the earth below just kept on spinning. Like he was dreaming and the rest of them awake, and living their lives, and changing. Like _he _should.

Some things don't change easily, though. Caroline's grave, the grave he just visited, still piled high with fresh flowers, though a month has gone by. The tender spot at his side, healing faster now than the guilt, but still quite persistently _there_. And Albert, waiting for him at a table in the shade, scowling over his espresso.

Tentatively, he navigates the clutter of tables and chairs, of squealing children and shopping bags. Albert, still unaware of him, looks tired in a way he never does in company, all pinched cheeks and slumped shoulders, head propped up on one hand. The other hand is rubbing circles at his temple, and something in Cooper's chest knots up a little.

Reaching the back of the empty chair, he pulls himself in by it just as Albert head snaps up. "Don't like the coffee?" he smiles faintly, indicating the still half-filled cup.

Albert harrumphs. "You know me – I'm a social drinker." Raised eyebrow as he tosses down the rest of his drink. "Though right now I'd kill for a smoke. I suspect the great big 'no smoking' sign is why you adore this place? Because, let me tell you, Coop, their espresso sucks."

He works up a grin. "I told you not to go for espresso, Albert. Large black is what you want here."

"'What I want' right now is irrelevant. What I _need _is caffeine."

"Well, I'll repeat my conviction: coffee should never be just about the caffeine. If it _is_, you need _sleep,_ more than you need –"

"_I_'ll sleep if _you_ do, okay?" And now Albert's eyes are no longer smiling. Instead, there's that sliver of fear again, the one he thought he'd seen the last of. "So –" Pent-up sigh. "What's the plan? Drive back now, or do you want a coffee first?"

"Yes." And it's a relief to be able to slide onto the chair, stretch out the ache in his side. "No offense on your brew, Albert, but – I _have _missed this place." Which is true, he realizes, with a jolt of surprise. He actually _has _missed it: the sharp, almost smoky taste of freshly ground beans, the noises, the smells. He _missed _this – which sounds like a small thing, but really isn't, at all.

"Hey." Albert clears his throat, lifts his sunglasses to peer at him. "You okay?" Neutral tone, open question – the same one that keeps bouncing between them, like the asking alone might change the answer. Cooper starts on the usual half-nod, half-shrug, instead surprises himself by saying something else entirely.

"I've decided – I'm not going to leave the Bureau."

Startled look. "Were you _considering_ to?"

"Yes." Waving vaguely at the waiter, he mouths '_two blacks' _before turning back. "You have to understand, Albert. I was looking for a way to deal with this. I considered…" Long beat. " Well, let's say I considered a lot of things."

"I see." Albert goes to straightening his cuffs, but his eyes betray him. Then, in a rush, "Look, Cooper, this is gonna sound trite as hell, but I'll say it anyway. Your feeling guilty about this – I can see where it comes from, I'm not a total bastard, _or_ blind, but… Don't. Just don't. It's counterproductive, unnecessary, and most of all, unjustified." Which, coming from Albert, is about as emotional a statement as they get.

He shakes his head, insistent. "She was a key witness in a case, Albert. And I allowed myself to fall in love with her."

Dryly, "Man can't blame himself for falling in love." Which is, of course, very much the point – for both of them.

"No," he admits, picking his words with care. "But he can for acting on it. It was the wrong thing to do. And because of it, I was off my guard."

"All right. One more try." Albert huffs, angrily fingers his sunglasses. "Say next week, I meet this guy in a bar. I think he's cute, he thinks I'm well-off, yadda yadda, I end up taking him home. Then afterwards, on his way back, he's ran over by a bus. Would you say that makes me culpable?"

"No, but..."

"Good, 'cause neither do I. And I know you don't wanna hear it, that you still think Earle's some kind of saint, but you know what _I'm _thinking. Earle was behind this, and he snapped. You can't hold yourself responsible for that. If it _was _him, he was a accident just waiting to happen, so –"

"It isn't that _simple_." The waitress, arriving with their coffees, gives him an awkward stare. He must have been raising his voice, he realizes. "Perhaps for you," he goes on, quietly, "living with death every day, the answers are easy. But to me –" And that's unfair, he knows it is. For all his cynicism and bad cop façades, Albert takes death just as seriously as he does.

"I don't live with _death_." Real bitterness now. "I live with the _dead_, which is hardly the same. And I don't believe in answers. Not those kinds, anyway." Hands lifting the coffee cup, drinking deep, like drowning something.

"What _do_ you believe in, Albert?" he asks, softly.

"In questions." The answer just as soft, but instantaneous. A shiver runs through Albert's frame, and in an impulse, Cooper leans over and squeezes his wrist. "In asking them. And – " Albert flinches a little in surprise, looks almost fragile when he lets go. "We solve murder cases, we catch rapists and madmen and serial killers, but we'll never know _why._ Why are people capable of this? We'll never know, but we keep looking anyway. Because that's what we do. And I believe…" Deep breath, and now a chill is running across his own spine, as well, "I believe we're better for trying."

"Amen to that," he says, and for the first time, he feels like something's still right in the world. Like _they_'re still right. "You okay?" Surprising both of them with the question.

"Yeah." Albert's smile is small, and tired, but unmistakably there. "Though I _could _use that night's sleep just now. You?"

"I'll sleep if you do," he says, and can almost believe it.


End file.
